


Gravity

by mr_es_beautiful_blues



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 15:57:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/408275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mr_es_beautiful_blues/pseuds/mr_es_beautiful_blues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nova, a mutant with the power to control gravity, is recruited to join the Avengers. Will she help in defeating Loki's threat or will the Avengers not stop arguing for long enough?<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there, this is my first fanfiction so please bare with! I was just playing with a few ideas for a new Avenger to join the team and this popped into my mind. Still updating, more chapters to come so I'm planning on adding in much more (characters, ships, comedy, etc). Please R&R! Thanks :)

It was another dreary Saturday morning in New York. Her alarm went off at 6.00, as it did every day, and the sound of the Coral’s _In the Morning_ began to fill the apartment. Nova groaned, before slamming the snooze button and climbing out of the cocoon she had created with her duvet, and padded towards her wardrobe.

Nova looked at her reflection in the mirror on the inside of her wardrobe door. She supposed she was quite weird looking; she was tall and pale with shocking blue eyes and she had really long hair, which grew at 3 times the normal rate, probably because of her power, and kept changing colour. It was black when she was a baby, and then at the age of 15 it had gone completely white. Explaining that to her classmates had been an…interesting experience; she had mumbled her way through some bullshit story of accidentally bleaching her hair when she meant to dye it. At the moment it was a sort of grey/silver. Nova was thankful that she lived in New York, as weird was kind of accepted, and she didn’t get too many looks for having the hair of an 80 year old at 23.

Nova was a mutant. And not a very good one at that. Her power had first appeared when she turned 18, and was that she was, in effect, an alien; she could control gravity to a certain diameter around her, she could "breathe" in a vacuum, she could withstand large amounts of radiation. But Nova wasn't in control of it at all. She had gone to Charles Xavier's school after some mutants recruited her from London for a grand total of 4 months and then she had left. Things hadn't gone so well; her attempts at making friends and doing well in classes evaporated when occasionally everyone in the classroom would hit the ceiling or be stuck to the floor under vast amounts of pressure. After the 5th classroom she smashed up, Nova decided it was probably best to leave.

Since then she'd had several secretary jobs, despite her majors in astrophysics and genetics. They lasted only 3 or 4 days each, as it was quite hard to explain to her boss why all the pens on his desk were floating, or why when she'd tried to use the water cooler it had exploded.

Nova pulled out her running clothes, shut the cupboard door and got dressed.

Her apartment was small; she didn’t have a flatmate or boyfriend, or if she was honest, any friends at all; but stylish.  Nova turned on the news whilst she made herself a mug of tea. She smiled to herself; she lived in a city fuelled by coffee and yet she couldn’t stand the stuff; she preferred to stick to the drink that matched her accent. Halfway through pouring hot water into her mug the newsreaders voice caught her attention.

 _‘...Stark has recently completed the construction of Stark Tower, a building he claims runs on purely renewable energy.’_ On the screen, Stark whizzed past the camera shot in his suit before landing on the roof of the nearest building in a dramatic kneeling position. Nova couldn’t help but snort, watching Tony Stark raise his helmet and wave at the people on the street below, before he winked into the camera and took off again. She found herself rolling her eyes. _Cocky bastard_. She switched off the TV, drained the last of her tea and set off on her run.

*

Agent Phil Coulson was not having a fantastic week. He hadn’t eaten in 18 hours or slept in 72, and Fury still had him on his feet constantly. Fury wanted the Avengers Initiative ready for use in a second if anything was to threaten Earth, and with Erik Selvig and his team researching into the Tesseract, Fury was even more anxious to be prepared for a possible attack…of what though? Phil finished off his cup of coffee, careful not to spill it down himself as the car stopped for traffic lights, and shook his head, as if that would keep his eyes from drooping shut a little longer. Whatever it was, Fury was calling on a strange group of people to deal with it. If Tony Stark was anything to go by, he wasn’t so sure this so called ‘team’ were going to work well together.

They turned down a side street and pulled into a parking space.

‘Agent Coulson?’ Phil turned towards the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who spoke from the front seat. ‘We’ve secured the perimeter.’ Phil nodded and put his earpiece in.

*

After a half hour shower in which Nova sang shamelessly, she dressed for another day of doing absolutely fuck all and walked into her kitchen, towelling her hair. She made it 4 steps towards the fridge when she stopped.

Something was wrong. She backtracked and looked to her left towards the sofa in front of the TV.

Phil Coulson rose from the sofa and managed ‘Ms Themis-’ before gravity stopped working. The TV, the sofa, the countless CDs and DVDs that were scattered around the surfaces, and Phil himself all rose into the air. He wheeled his arms in a futile attempt to regain balance, but as suddenly as it had disappeared, gravity returned and he smashed to the ground, along with everything else in the lounge area.

If he had been looking at Nova at that point instead of her carpet, he would have seen the look of utter panic that crossed her face. But immediately she was calm, and perched casually on the side of her kitchen table. She levitated a yogurt from the fridge and peeled back the wrapper.

Phil found he couldn’t move. The force pressing him into the floor compared to the Hulk sitting on his back.

 _It is far too early_ , was the only thing that occurred to him.

‘Who are you and what the ever living fuck are you doing in my flat?’ she said, almost conversationally. ‘You can knock you know. I’d like to know if I have an audience when I perform my concerts in the shower.’

‘Ms – Themis.’ Phil tried. God, he was underpaid. ‘If you could let me up – I will explain,’ he panted. He felt the pressure release slightly, so much that he could sit up, straighten his tie and face her. He was still stuck to the ground though, which was reasonably humiliating. He felt like he was in preschool again, sitting cross-legged in front of the teacher.

‘My name is Agent Coulson; I’m an Agent for S.H.I.E.L.D.’ To this, Nova just quirked an eyebrow without looking up, focusing all her attention on licking the yogurt off the wrapper. ‘I’ve come to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.’

‘Talk?’ She levitated a spoon over from the counter, by removing all gravity below it, raising it high and then inducing gravity to its right constantly until it slid diagonally towards her. She then began to dig in to her yogurt. Phil watched this whole process with a patient expression on his face. ‘So those monkeys on the fire escape with M-16s are just for show?’

Phil turned to look out onto the fire escape and signalled to the men, who climbed down. He removed his earpiece.

‘Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. is concerned for the safety of Earth. The Avengers Initiative is a plan to protect it. We would like to bring together a team of individuals with skills that could protect the Earth in case of a…attack or threat of any kind.’ Damn, his knees were really beginning to ache. He had to get back into shape when he got back on the Helicarrier.

Nova looked up with a bemused expression on her face. ‘And you want me to join?’ She laughed, until she noticed Phil’s solemn expression. ‘Oh. You’re not joking.’

Phil shook his head. She sighed and walked back towards the kitchen to throw away her yogurt pot, removing her concentration from maintaining gravity, allowing Phil to get to his feet. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Agent Coulston-’

‘Coulson,’ Phil corrected.

‘Uh, right. The point is I don’t think I’m going to be all that beneficial to the team.’

Phil straightened. ‘Directory Fury seems to think so. Plus, you have no alliance to the X-Men, no job, no family, no friends-’

‘Rude!’ Nova interjected, pointing her spoon at him.

Phil just raised an eyebrow.

‘However, true. Carry on,’ Nova said sheepishly.

‘We’re presenting you with the ideal opportunity to do something more than secretary jobs.’

Nova began to resent how much S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about her life. Did they have on file somewhere her pizza order, or her favourite brand of tampons? She supressed the urge to ask. She got the vibe from Agent Coulson that it wouldn’t be that well received.

‘I appreciate that. I just don’t think…’ She trailed off, not wanting to sound pitiful. ‘I don’t think the rest of the team would quite appreciate my talents.’ Nova looked momentarily curious. ‘Who are the others?’

‘Classified information, Ms Themis.’

Nova nodded. She’d expected that. She could guess a few; Iron Man was probably in there, and that guy they dug from the ice a few days ago, Captain America.

‘I’m not interested. I’ve been recruited by people like you before and let’s just say it didn’t go fantastically. I’m sure you will do just fine without me.’ Nova turned away, trying to insinuate that the conversation was over.

Phil pondered this for a moment. Fury would want him to try harder to get her to join, but if he was honest he just wanted to sleep. And eat. God, he could absolutely kill for a doughnut. Or a pizza.

He pulled himself out of his food reverie. ‘If you are sure there is nothing I can do to convince you?’ Nova turned to face him with an expression that read _Imma show you want the ceiling feels like again in a second if you don’t leave me to watch BBCA in peace._ ‘I’ll leave S.H.I.E.L.D.’s number in case you change your mind.’ He dropped a plain card on the table with only a number on it, with a calling code Nova had never seen.

‘Thank you for your time.’ Phil nodded to her and walked towards the front door.

She called towards his retreating back. ‘Call before you drop by next time, yeah? Tell me what tunes you’d like.’

She was rewarded with a chuckle.

*


	2. Chapter 2

For about 2 weeks, Nova sat in her apartment, bored. Funds were running out and she hadn't bothered looking for a job as she knew it would end in disaster.

She had considered calling Agent Coulson several times, but each time she had chickened out and convinced herself that they wouldn't appreciate it if everything in S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ suddenly went flying. Then the Avengers had saved New York City and well, the world, from the monsters that had appeared from a hole in the sky. She watched the news reports and laughed at Roger's interview on Loose Women where they teased him shamelessly and he tried his best to maintain his gentlemanly manner, and Stark and Banner's press conference as they spoke about going into business together, working on a new range of geneticy technology thingymobobs that Nova really should have been more interested in, but purely could not be bothered.

Nova had eventually fallen into a slump where she only got out of bed to eat and go to the loo occasionally. After about a week, finally feeling disgusted at how lethargic she was, she got up for a walk around her block to grab some more groceries and check her balance on her debit card.

She left the flat in tracksuits, not expecting to meet anyone who would care about the way she looked. Only when she reached the road did she realise it was about 10pm. It didn’t matter; the supermarket would still be open.

Nova trudged along the block through the pools of light given off by the streetlamps. It was a bit chilly for an October evening, and not many people were around.

She checked her debit card, cringed at the balance, and ripped up the receipt into lots of tiny pieces as she walked towards the supermarket. When she reached it she bought another bottle of milk and a smoothie, which she opened on the way home.

Nova had just turned the corner onto her road again when someone hurtled around the corner and smashed into her right shoulder. The force of it made her drop her bottle of milk.

‘Hey, dickhead! Watch where you’re going!’ Nova blazed angrily, kicking the now empty bottle of milk with one of her sodden trainers. She turned, ready to hurtle some ass at least 10 storeys, when she came face to face with a robot of some kind.

Nova gasped. It was creepy looking. It was vaguely humanoid, with some areas looking really realistically human. Like someone had tried to patch skin onto it. Lights flashed and dials whirred angrily, and the camera lenses it had for eyes jerked backwards and forwards, scanning her face.

The robot was currently recalibrating and checking for damages she presumed, as it was moving each part of its body individually. Suddenly it shot forward, pinning Nova against the wall with one pincer-like hand and holding a menacing looking blow torch appendage to her face with the other.

‘Oookay, nice robot,’ Nova smoothed. ‘I’m sorry I called you a dickhead. I’m sure you’re a lovely robot. Person. Thing.’ Christ, she was ballsing this up. ‘Now, howbouts you let me go and we forget this happened. Heck, I won’t even ask you to pay for the milk.’ Nova could feel the heat of the blowtorch on her cheek, and could see the wires behind the Perspex light up with the orange glow.

‘No?’ The robot responded only by bringing the blowtorch close enough that Nova could smell her hair burning. ‘Alright then.’

Then the robot was floating off into the air, arms windmilling. Nova simply grabbed the ends of the hair closest to her face and growled when she saw they were brown and curled. _Urgh. What is it with me and mad robots that burn my hair and spill my milk?_

From around the corner, voices approached, getting louder by the second. They were accompanied by quick footfall.

‘How could you _not_ bring the suit?’ A man’s voice, incredulous. ‘Our first experiment and you don’t think to bring anything we could stop it with?’

Another man’s voice; this one snarkier. ‘Please, Bruce, it’s not a big deal! Just a bit of fun, in the form of a semi-organic prototype. It’ll be _fine_.’ A pause. ‘Plus, I have to lug around my weaponry in one big-ass suitcase. Unlike some people I can’t just get a little _ticked off_ and hope for the best. Speaking of which I don’t see you doing, as you seem so worried about old Bobby here.’

‘ _Bobby?_ You named it? And you know why I can’t do that, unless you want this whole block ripped up.’

‘Of course. Why, did you have a better name?’ Nova realised why the voices sounded familiar. They belonged to Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

Just as she realised this they rounded the corner. She recognised their faces from the press interviews. They both wore casual clothes and had the look of two men who hadn’t slept for a while, kept awake by excitement. They stopped when they saw her.

‘Oh hi - heeey what now,’ Tony began before noticing his robot floating behind Nova.

‘Oh. Um,’ Nova looked up at it. ‘It started it?’

Bruce looked completely lost. ‘What…are…are you doing this?’ He looked from her to the robot and back again.

‘Uh,’ Nova began, rubbing one foot behind her calf. ‘Yeah?’ Seeing neither man was about to do anything, she asked, ‘Should I bring it down?’

‘Please,’ said Tony. ‘It’s only a massively expensive innovation that’s taken us most of the wee – ouch!’ Tony was cut off by the sharp stab of Bruce’s elbow in his ribs.

Nova lowered the robot back to the ground carefully. It clicked at her reproachfully, but Tony whipped out a screwdriver and shut it down before any more of her hair caught alight.

‘Bad Bobby,’ Tony scolded, rapping its head with the screwdriver. He then removed a disk from the back of the robots head and slid it into a slot in his phone. Footage began playing, Nova presumed of the robots journey.

Bruce cleared his throat. When this didn’t get Tony’s attention, who was very intently focusing on his phone, Bruce said, ‘Tony, maybe we should do this back at the lab?’

Tony flicked his eyes up briefly. ‘Why would we do that now, when I can do this right here on my phone?’ He flashed a smile and wiggled his phone to emphasise the point.

Bruce just coughed and looked pointedly in Nova’s direction.

‘What? Oh, don’t worry about her. After all, she is a mutant,’ Tony said triumphantly, holding his phone up for the other two to see. On the screen there was a snapshot of her face, from when the robot first saw her, and files filled the page with a stamp that read _S.H.I.E.L.D. – CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION_ printed across the top.

For the second time in 2 weeks, Nova felt as though S.H.I.E.L.D. knew far too much about her.

‘Tony.’ Bruce said sharply. But Tony was enjoying himself greatly, whizzing through her files. Bruce just glanced apologetically in Nova’s direction, to see her amused expression as she watched Tony comment every now and then (‘Ooh, Cambridge University? Very impressive. Astrophysics and genetics! Even more so.), so he relaxed.

All of a sudden Tony’s phone bleeped. A mechanical voice came from the phone.

‘Sorry Sir, these files I can’t enter.’

‘Oh come on Jarvis, it’s only S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Tony pouted. ‘Try again.’

Bruce just muttered, ‘Fury is going to shit bricks when he sees you’ve hacked the files again,’ which, to Bruce's surprise, Nova laughed at, and was a comment which Tony promptly ignored.

Eventually, frustrated, Tony put his phone away. ‘I can’t get into them,’ he grouched. As if noticing Nova for the first time, he held out his hand. ‘Tony Stark. This is Dr Bruce Banner.’

She shook it. ‘Nova Themis.’

‘Why are you on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s system?’ Bruce looked curious again, as he had when he’d first seen the robot floating.

Nova felt a little self-conscious. She stood in front of some of the brightest minds in the world and she was dressed in a pair of grey trackies accessorised with milk. ‘S.H.I.E.L.D., whoever they are, were interested in me for a bit. Thought my powers could benefit them, I suppose.’ She shrugged.

‘Those powers, the ones where you can make shit fly?’ Tony’s snark came back into his voice, and he pointed at the robot for emphasis.

‘Yes. No. Well, my mutation is that I am adapted to live in space. I can control gravity to an extent, survive cosmic radiation, etc. etc.’

Bruce looked fascinated. ‘All from a mutation in your genes?’

Tony rolled his eyes, but fondly.

‘They wanted me to join some Avengers thing. You know; the thing you do.’ Nova blushed, and now Tony looked interested. ‘I said no, though.’

‘Nova, I think it’s time for you to meet the team.’ Tony turned, grinning to Bruce. ‘Don’t you think so?’

Bruce laughed. 'You're planning on using her to annoy Fury at your file hacking technique? Yeah, let's introduce her.' He seemed as if he wanted to say something more, but hesitated.

‘And Bruce here wants you to be his lab rat.’ Bruce thumped him. ‘What, it’s true!’ Tony persisted. She laughed, before becoming solemn.

‘I’m not sure.’ Nova shifted her weight from one leg to the other.

‘I promise I won’t let him stick needles anywhere too awkward.’ Tony said, with a cough, before correcting himself. ‘Okay, so I can’t promise that.’

Nova smiled. Here were Dr Banner and Tony Stark, the men she most admired in the world, offering her a chance to see their lab? She wasn’t about to give that up.

She just had to concentrate on not slamming stuff around.

‘Okay. Sure.’

Tony grinned. ‘Great. You’ll get along great with everyone.’ He frowned momentarily. ‘Maybe not Nat. But she’s never really liked anyone, has she?’ Bruce just shrugged in agreement.

‘Oh, you don’t mind aircraft right?’ Nova raised an eyebrow. Tony explained. ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’s HQ are somewhat…isolated.’

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick next chapter, I will try to write again soon! :) Might be a while.


End file.
